And how lovely – a simple feature that emails a “thank you” to your commenters and encouraging further engagement by providing the link back to their comment and whatever else you include in that email, for instance inviting to subscribe to your feed, join your Facebook group, follow you on Twitter, etc.

You can target specific categories and/or tags, for those of you even more organised – for instance, I will set one up for the Using WordPress category to suggest commenters visit other pages that will be useful for them.

It is very simple to set up – simply to go your Plugins section, then click on Add New, search for “Thank Me Later” and there it will be, at the top – Install this, then Activate and set up your email(s) in the Thank Me Later section provided (below your Settings section). If you comment on this blog post, within 10 minutes of being approved you will receive an email – so you can see what the commenter gets.

More often we’re being asked to build a blog for clients who’ve been told they must. Of course it’s great that businesses large and small now accept the potential of blogging, and probably we should just take your money, offer you an excellent WordPress blog, then let you get stuck in.

Made with Wordle.net

However, as with all aspects of online marketing, blogging must be carefully considered before you set about it. Be careful of who you heed; just because someone says that you “must be blogging” does not necessarily make it the best thing for your business.

So – for all of you who ask us to build a blog for you, and for anyone that wants to know how to figure out whether blogging is likely to be useful or not, we bring you:

7 ways to work out if blogging can work for your business

Time: Before anything else, consider the time you have, or someone in your team has, available for this aspect of marketing. Do you have a couple of hours or more available for blogging? Every week? Spending just half an hour a fortnight on this is unlikely to reap many rewards.

Money: If you don’t have time, can you afford to pay someone else to work on your blog for you? Someone who may be better at it and so attract the business you hope for. Do you actually need your own blog or could guest blogging on other relevant blog sites achieve what you want?

And talking of guests – will you welcome them? This can be a good way of adding content that your visitors/clients/readers will appreciate while taking the pressure off you to constantly create.

Perhaps even consider a wider focus for the blog and work together with complimentary businesses – definitely something to consider if you want to share the work (and the glory, true, but working together can get you there sooner).

Expectation: Really think about and decide what you expect of your blog. Is it something you just want to write because you’ve been told it is essential for your business, or do you really have something to share? Can you write things that people actually want to read? What do you have to say?

Style: And what style of blogging will your readers, your clients new and old, enjoy most and be most likely to share? What can you give them that is worthy of their time? Can you actually write in a style that your customers will enjoy reading or do you need to get someone else working on that? Writing because you want to but not for the people you want to attract is vanity – fine if that’s what you want, go for it, but not necessarily best if you want more business.

What’s the point? Do you expect your blog to result in x amount of business, or do you simply want to teach people how to do stuff themselves, thereby showing that you really know what you’re talking about? Of course you can include bits of everything, but the core purpose needs to be clear in your mind to be the success you expect. For soft marketers (and this is the camp I am firmly within, no matter how I try other methods) this can be a great way to attract people – helping others to DIY while also building your reputation and brand.

Can you stick to the point? Or might you possibly get a bit carried away with this blogging lark. It’s easily done – I could merrily blog all day but that does not get the actual work done. If you enjoy writing it is tempting to do nothing else, so a little discipline is likely to be required for those of us that get carried away 😉

Blogs are brilliant – I love blogging and encouraging others to blog in a way they are comfortable with and that brings rewards, at whatever level – purely for pleasure or as a way to grow their business. But it’s not for everyone and merrily setting about something without first figuring out the what, why and how is less likely to result in success.

With thanks to Sarah for her suggestions on the 7 ways – they had me in fits of laughter and inspired more blog posts!

Babs

PS: If you’d like to bounce the idea around with us, pop an email to me at hello@blogmistress.com with your answers to the above and we’ll offer you some honest feedback (really – if we cannot see that blogging is going to bring you what you want, we’ll tell you but also offer other social media avenues that may be more profitable for you).

You have an idea for a blog post. Not just any blog post, this is one that will really mean something to lots of people. They will send others to read it. They will join in with comments and tweet that post to the world and beyond.

So you have to get it right. And after several weeks and many hours of tweaking and rewriting, you feel it is finally good enough to publish.

And you watch the stats. You tweet and share and ask for ReTweets, and share and… 29 people read it. All that effort!

So… Sometimes, in fact most of the time, just write it and post it in one fell swoop. Just as I am making myself do with this one. Having taken a very long time (no, I will not say how long, it is too embarrassing) to write what I think is a great topic and that I have taken a lot of care in writing in order not to be misunderstood (ha – that’s likely to happen anyway, however carefully you word even any blog with slightest contention about it) – for this post I am not going to stop until it is done! And how on earth can I show you and tempt you and tell you to Just DO It when I’m not just doing it myself.

One of the best people I know to JDI is Sarah Arrow, with whom we’ve worked – she is the polar opposite of me I think and what that woman can get done in an hour it takes me a week to allow into the blogosphere. Enough – I have learned well and know that yes, I will get it wrong sometimes, but actually I do know what I’m on about so will just do it!

So watch this space as we just do the Just Do It Blogging course from 1st July Oh yes… After I’ve found an image for this post and updated everything and installed the forum and and and

Not a day goes by when a tweet flitters through my twitter-stream with “How to make money with your blog” or “Blogging for $$ Profits” and I roll my eyes and move along to tweets that might actually be interesting. But then I’m old-fashioned and not someone who’s going to get rich quick (if ever!).

So what is the point of blogging then, if it’s not to make money?

Well that really depends on what you’re about, I suggest. For the Blogmistress, for instance, the blog posts show you how do to things yourself, show you that we know what we’re doing, and so build a reputation as people to turn to for blogging and/or WordPress support.

And then for many of us, if we accept the “know, like, trust/people buy from people” way of business, then readers of your blog posts are going to get to know you, and some will then like you and so on… which of course attracts business.

But to blog with the sole aim of making money – I wonder how often that actually works, in real life…

or “why the Blogmistress does not apply every possible tag to blog posts”, or if I was to get all “awesome” I’d title this “The Skinny on WordPress Tags” perhaps – but I digress already.

After being gently admonished recently for not using tags prolifically for SEO purposes, I thought it time to outline just what to do with Tags.

It can be confusing to know just what to do with Tags in your WordPress blog posts. We have Categories so why do we need Tags?

And of course there are dozens of differing points of view on this – some “experts” insisting that tags are vital for SEO, and some, more sensibly (in my opinion), considering the wider strategy and user experience (which is what they are there for).

WordPress included the option of tagging your blog posts to offer another level of categorisation, sub-categories if you like, for your blog posts. Posts with similar tags can then be linked together, displayed together much in the same way as categories are, but more specific.

Before anything else, consider how using tags can be helpful for your visitors – never mind the search engines, focus on people. From their point of view Tags may be helpful in finding blog posts around a particular topic, within a Category. And of course by including that tag, it does offer a route that the search engines can follow in order to offer relevant results for their searchers.

Be careful not to overdo it. I suggest keeping tags to a minimum – too many and you not only dilute your blog post some, but you also add to the work your blog has to do to keep up with it all – and that can slow your website/blog down, something you do not want. Any SEO benefit could be wiped out by such, I suggest; it makes a difference.

So – make use of your Tags but keep them useful, focused and relevant.

Just looking at the snapshot of ours I can see a few that really are not going to be helpful for anyone, so will pop in and edit those. That can be a useful thing to do now and again, when you have a few dozen posts under your belt – take a look at your tag cloud and see if it is likely to help or hinder your visitors. I’ll be adding the tag cloud again when it is more relevant!